This document discusses team work and team building. It defines types of teams and explains the synergy that can be created when teams work well together by increasing resources, improving decision making, enhancing commitment, and fostering creativity. The document also outlines task and maintenance activities teams engage in, as well as behaviors to avoid. It identifies obstacles to teamwork and characteristics of high performing teams. Finally, it discusses inputs, throughputs, and outputs of effective team building.
1. Team work & Team building
To understand the basic concepts and ideas
of team work and team building.
To appreciate the strengths and difficulties
of working as a team.
To learn the basics of promoting team work
in the organization.
2. Types of Teams
Formal versus informal
Mechanical versus organic
Inter-team versus intra-team
Inter-agency versus intra-agency
Same discipline versus different disciplines
User-involved versus user-led
3. Synergy of Teams
Synergy: the creation of a whole that is
greater than the sum of its parts.
Usefulness of synergy includes:
– increasing resources for problem solving
– improving quality of decision making
– enhancing members’commitments to tasks
– fostering creativity and innovation
– satisfying individual needs for growth
4. Task Activities of a Team
Initiating
Information sharing
Summarizing
Elaborating
Opinion giving
Distributed leadership
5. Maintenance Activities of a Team
Gatekeeping
Encouraging
Harmonizing
Reducing tension
Norming
Self-managing
6. Avoidance of disruptive activities
or behavior
Being aggressive
Blocking
Self-confessing
Seeking sympathy
Competing
Withdrawal
Seeking recognition
7. Obstacles to Team Work
Personality conflicts: Individual differences in
personality and work style may disrupt the group.
Task ambiguity: Unclear agendas and ill-defined
problems.
Free riding: Diffusion of individual efforts and
responsibilities.
Poor readiness to work: Wasting of time in
unprepared meetings
8. Characteristics of High
Performance Teams
A clear and elevating goal
A task-driven, result-oriented structure
Competent and committed members
A collaborative climate
External support, recognition and
delegation
Strong, principled and yet democratic
leadership
9. Team cohesiveness versus
performance norms
Low productivity: strong commitments to
harmful norms
Low to moderate productivity: weak
commitments to harmful norms
High productivity: strong commitments to
supportive norms
Moderate productivity: weak commitments
to supportive norms
10. Teamthink/Groupthink
Teamthink or Groupthink is the tendency
for highly cohesive groups to lose their
critical evaluative capabilities for
undermining their weaknesses and
promoting their strengths. Because of
undesirable competition and disruption
between teams, alienation will be resulted
accordingly.
11. Symptoms of Groupthink
Illusions of group invulnerability
Belief in inherent group morality
Applying direct pressure to ‘deviants’ to conform
to group wishes
Self-censorship by members
Accepting consensus prematurely
Protecting the team from hearing disturbing
viewpoints from outsiders
12. How to handle groupthink
Encourage a sharing of viewpoints
Create subgroups to work on the same
problem and then share their proposed
solutions
Assign one member to play a ‘devil’s
advocate’ role at each group meeting
Review the decision after consensus is
apparently achieved
13. Inputs of Team building
Organizational setting: resources,
technology, structures, atmosphere
Nature of task: clarity and complexity
Group size: number of members
Membership characteristics: abilities,
values and personalities
User participation: primary versus
secondary users
14. Throughputs of team building
The way members interact and work
together to transform inputs into outputs.
The process through which ideas and
contribution of team members are
recognized.
15. Outputs of team building
Accomplishment of desired outcomes as
follows:
- task performance and productivity
- human resource maintenance and
development
- prevention of disruptive groupthink and
team alienation
16. Task Functions
Information and opinion giver
information and opinion seeker
starter
direction giver
summariser
co-ordinator
diagnoser
energiser
reality tester
evaluator
17. Task Needs
Defining the task
Making a plan
allocating work
controlling work quality
checking performance against the plan
adjusting the plan
18. Maintenance Functions
encourager of participation
Harmoniser
tension reliever
communication helper
evaluator of emotional climate
process observer
standard setter
active listener
trust builder
interpersonal problem solver
19. Maintenance Needs
Setting standards
maintaining discipline
building team spirit
encouraging, motivating, giving a sense of
purpose
ensuring communication with the group
training the group as a group
21. Individual Needs
attending to personal problems
encouraging individuals
giving status
recognising and using individual abilities
training the individual
